You Know What They Say About a Guy With Big Hands…

Zhang Huan’s Fresh Open Buddha Hand (2006).Image courtesy of the artist and Asia Society, New York.

As the first of many fall previews, we bring you this giant, delicately decayed hand by Zhang Huan. For the past few years, the famously masochistic Chinese performance artist has been focusing on large-scale sculptural works like this one, giving his body some much-deserved R&R — this is, after all, the artist who has tied himself naked to Tokyo’s Watari Museum in an effort to physically take it down, and simulated sex with a donkey. All, of course, in the name of art. Zhang Huan’s first major Stateside retrospective, “Altered States,” opens at the Asia Society on Friday. —Rachel Wolff